Hope turns to horror as disappearance becomes murder probe

Valerie Fortney, Calgary Herald07.15.2014

Natalie Stevenson and her mom place flowers and a balloon at the memorial to Alvin and Kathy Liknes and their five-year-old grandson, Nathan O’Brien, after police announced the missing-persons case is now being treated as a triple homicide.

As the clouds move in on another hot Calgary summer afternoon, the words written on a fading piece of pink paper flutter in the welcome breeze. Beside the sign on the front lawn of the Parkhill home sits a stuffed bear, a green ribbon tied around its neck. On the nearby front step, a green lantern, with the word love written across it, stands as a hopeful guide.

Also on the step is a bouquet of flowers, the first of many tokens to be placed in honour of a missing couple and their blond-haired, five-year-old grandson, a boy known by all as sweet and kind.

On Monday, the home of Kathy and Alvin Liknes is no longer a police investigation scene. With the yellow police tape surrounding it removed after two weeks, the blue split-level where Jennifer O’Brien last saw her son Nathan is now just another house on the block.

If it were only true. On this saddest of days for a community, a city, a country, the word “believe” has given way to cold, hard facts — those facts telling us all what so many greatly feared but hoped otherwise.

“I wanted to believe that they had skipped town,” says Christina Hagerty as she arrives to find media back at the house just three down from her own. Two weeks ago, the local realtor came home to find police cars and media surrounding her neighbours’ home. Seeing a flurry of new activity, she knows why.

“I wanted to believe anything, anything but this,” she says, her eyes tearing up as she watches the first of many people come by with flowers, stuffed animals and cards. “I just wanted to believe that something like this couldn’t happen to good people in a good neighbourhood.”

Earlier in the day, I sit in on the press conference at which Calgary police Chief Rick Hanson voices the dreaded news: the couple and their grandson are presumed dead. Even without their bodies, Hanson tells us, police have enough evidence to be confident this is now a case of first-degree murder for the two adults — described to me last week by Kathy’s brother Randy Prevost as happy and loving — and one of second-degree murder for the little boy who loved to wear superhero costumes and go bowling with his relatives.

Hanson is well aware that his words will devastate a large and loving family, one that has already suffered through two weeks of not knowing.

Throughout yet another chaotic day of covering a terrible chapter in our city’s history, my email and social media feeds explode after a short weekend respite.

We all wanted to believe the words of Jennifer O’Brien at last Thursday’s candlelight vigil, that the disappearance of her parents and child would have “a happy ending.” It takes a while for such a belief to be shaken off, to accept the worst kind of ending to a story that has captured the attention and hearts of people around the world.

“I’m having a hard time believing they’re gone,” says Natalie Stevenson, as she drops off a giant flower-shaped balloon sporting a happy face. The young woman, a friend of the Liknes family, says some of the family’s members are holding on to the hope that the three are still alive. “Jennifer won’t stop believing,” she says of Nathan O’Brien’s mom. “I think I’d feel the same way if that was me.”

Just behind Stevenson come Caroline Hart and Maddy Taylor, two residents of the community of Parkland. “We went to the vigil. It made us so hopeful,” says Taylor. “We have green ribbons outside our homes, I don’t want to take them down.”

Hart says that while she doesn’t know the family, the tragedy hits close to home for her. “I lost a son at birth,” she says. “At least I got a chance to see him and say goodbye.”

Debra Glenfield braves afternoon rush-hour traffic to come from the far northwest. “I wanted to show the family that people all over the city are heartbroken for them,” says the mother of two boys, just as a young woman, this one crying and holding a little blond-haired boy in her arms, adds another bouquet to the growing pile. “I also needed to be here, to feel like this is real.”

As I head home from this growing shrine to a family loved and lost, I feel a drop of rain on my face. I think about all those flowers and cards soaked if it rains. I think about my own hope now gone, that I won’t have the privilege of writing a happy ending.

But, mostly, I think about that already weathered piece of paper with the word “Believe” written across it — writing that will soon fade, though for some its power will only grow.

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